from the
Holy Land
from
Rabbi Ephraim
Schwartz
"Your friend
in Karmiel"
April 4th
2023 -Volume 12 Issue
25 14th of Nissan 5783
Pesach
The Goat in the Middle of the Room
It’s the elephant in the middle of the room. Or to
be more precise it’s the goat. It’s that thing that’s sitting there and
everyone is just continuing along as if there’s nothing strange. Just going
about their daily activities and pretending like it doesn’t exist. It didn’t
happen. Everything is normal. As I reviewed my Hagdda before preparing for this
big holiday coming up, that was the thought that struck me,. How come nobody is
talking about it?
See, it’s not like Pesach is a time when we don’t
talk about things. In fact there’s probably no time of year when we talk more
and engage in conversation. It’s a mitzva to talk this evening. Some
suggest that the even the name Pesach is a conjunction of two Hebrew words Peh-
Sach- the mouth talks. We start off our Magid by the Seder
with the story of the great Rabbis in Bnai Brak that spend all night talking
and we say it’s praiseworthy to talk and talk and talk… It’s a Rabbi’s dream
night. We love to talk. Yet, perhaps the most obvious subject that one would
assume we would be talking about is not even mentioned at all. It’s as if we
pretend it never happened. It’s bizarre, after-all it’s the whole reason why we
were there in the first place.
See, ask any child why it is we were in Mitzrayim?
How did we get there? What was the reason we were sent out of Eretz Yisrael where
our forefathers lived for centuries and went into this first exile of ours?
They all know. We learned it in first grade. We read the parshiyot in
the Torah. They were unforgettable.
It was because the brothers sold Yosef down
there. Remember that story? There’s quite a few parshiyot that talked
about this at great length. It’s the exciting parshas that make up the
entire 2nd half of Sefer Bereishis. Pharaoh, Yosef, Potifar, The
butler, the baker, pits with snakes, accusations of being spies, of treason and
of stealing goblets. There are those dreams that were fulfilled; Yaakov’s
mourning, set-ups and frame-ups… How come we’re not talking about any of this?
It’s as if someone censored this most important part of the story of our coming
down to Egypt out!
The truth is it’s really an almost “un-Jewish”
approach. We always try to get to the root issues of why Hashem brings
tragedies upon us. The first Temple was destroyed because of the three cardinal
sins; Idolatry, Adultery and Murder. The second because of Sinas Chinam-
baseless hatred. Everything else that ever happened to us in the past 2000
years of Exile, all the persecutions, the pogroms, the Crusades, the Expulsions
and Inquisitions are because of the internet, social media, long shaitels and
smartphones… Obviously… So how come on Pesach nobody seems to be talking about
the reason that seems very clear for why this all happened? We sold our brother
down to Egypt. We didn’t respect one another. We don’t get along. We have
serious family issues.
Now don’t make the mistake of thinking that there’s
way too much to talk about in the Egypt slavery and Exodus story alone and that
we don’t want to make this night any longer and too confusing for anyone. Because
in fact we do seemingly trace back our history. Not only our history. We go back
to Terach Avraham’s father, we mention Yaakov and Uncle Lavan, we even throw in
Esau for good measure- although how he got into the picture I still don’t know.
But then seemingly at what seems to be the most essential part of understanding
the story of how we got down to Egypt in the first place, Poof! we jump over to
being slaves. Or perhaps I should say we “skip” over it… Maybe that’s why it’s
called Pesach. Or maybe not… It’s a “woke” censored, politically corrected Haggada
and Pesach story. It takes talent and deliberation to leave this out and not
mention the Yosef story. What’s going on?
Thinking about it now for a second, frankly the
name for the holiday Pesach is really quite a strange one. The names that best
describes the holiday should be more than about the one small fact that Hashem
skipped over our houses that night and didn’t kill us. First of all why should
we have been killed in the first place? Second of all, to put in it modern day
perspective, let’s say that the Nazi’s
are coming to kill us and then Hashem wipes them out, and He doesn’t hit our
house and that becomes the name of the holiday? Really...? How about Redemption
Day! Miracle night! Retribution Evening… Skip? Sounds like we could use some
good marketing and branding on this Title. Would you ever title the film about Yetzias
Mitzrayim, “Skippy”?
OK, so the truth of the matter is I’ll tell you
a little secret here. This might sound revolutionary, but you don’t come here
and read this long E-Mail for the usual “same-old- same-old” you read everywhere
else. So here goes. You can handle the truth. The holiday of Pesach is not only
named after the fact that Hashem skipped over our house that night. As I said
it doesn’t make sense that is should be. In fact, if you don’t believe me, check
out the Torah. Hashem commands us to take the Pesach sacrifice and it calls it
that even before He tells us He skips over our house. It’s called a Pesach for
Hashem. A skip for Hashem?
Why else is it called Pesach? Rather it’s because
of the sacrifice. It’s because of the goat that we slaughter and dip it’s blood
in a pail called a “saf” and then shmear it on our two doorposts and on
the lintel. It’s because that night of Pesach we are all locked in our house.
We are all sitting there with our families. We are all around the table, while havoc
is wreaking outside. And we look at that doorpost on the front of our house and
we watch the blood drip…drip…drip… on the sparkling clean freshly waxed floor.
Drip…Drip…Drip…
I heard an incredible idea from Reb Motti Alon
recently that gave me this perspective of that Seder and all Pesach Seders that
I have never had before. That truly changes everything. See, we are told that when
we left Mitzrayim only 20% of our nation merited to leave. 80 percent of Klal
Yisrael weren’t worthy of going out. They liked it better there… They didn’t
have what it took. And so they died. They died in the Plague of darkness; we are
told so that the Egyptians shouldn’t scorn us.
Do you know what 80% means? It means that there
wasn’t a family, basically, when we left that wasn’t in mourning. That hadn’t
lost someone or maybe even a few family members in that pandemic. We were all
in Shloshim that night. And we were all locked up in that room, in that
house and we were looking around at the same seats at our Pesach feast and
watching that blood drip down. The whole family was meant to be together…but we
weren’t. We were missing a few that died. We weren’t complete. Our brother wasn’t
there with us. Why did this happen? What is this night all about? How can we be
redeemed? Drip…Drip…Drip…
Do you know what that blood reminds us of? Do
you remember the last time we slaughtered a goat and dipped something in its blood?
Do you remember when we sold our brother Yosef down to Egypt? Rabbeinu Manoach
suggests that we start off our Pesach Seder with the act of Karpas even before
we get to the Matza because Karpas- a strange word- comes from the word
Pasim- like the Ketonet Pasim-the colored coat of Yosef that we
removed from him and dipped in blood. The blood we dip on the doorpost the
Torah tells us repeatedly that we scoop out of a “saf” a pail. Also not
a common word. But it kind of sounds like “Yo-sef”… right? You know what we did
after we sold Yosef? We sat down to “eat bread” The Unkelos translates
the words “we sat down” as we “reclined”. Sound familiar to anything we
are doing this night? That we just did before Karpas as we drank our first cup
of wine and are about to break out the matza….
We stole Yosef from his father and right after
Karpas…isn’t there a little stealing action going on? Another strange custom,
as we steal that afikoman… that broken matza… the one that reminds us of
slavery… the brother that’s not with us… that was kidnapped… that is the Pesach
offering replacement symbol called the
Afikoman. We’ll see that matza fragment at the end of the Seder again by Tzafun.
Do you know someone who was called Tzafnat Panei’ach – the revealer of the hidden?
The title that was given to Yosef in Mitzrayim. It is the last thing we need to
eat and rectify and return to our father before we are finally redeemed. To our
Father. Are you getting it yet? Drip…Drip... Drip…
The Seder is all about putting us there again.
But rather than our father Yaakov in mourning and the pain and suffering we
caused him. We are mourning. We’ve lost our siblings. We even have an egg of
mourning that many have the custom to eat at the Seder. It’s even the same day
of the week that Tisha B’av falls out on. There’s no reason to talk about the
causes of being sent down to Mitzrayim. It’s dripping from our doorpost. It’s
the goat in the middle of the room for the past few days. Its us sitting in
middle of Shloshim for our dearly departed who aren’t here to celebrate with
us.
The word and title for this holiday… that Hashem
tells us it’s called is PeSaCH- Pesach can be read as Pas- again as the Ketonet
Pasim that is on the Ches shape of our door post. Two sides mezuzos
and the lintel on the top is the shape of a ches. The Ketonet Pasim-
that goat-bloody cloak is on our doorpost as we sit in mourning all night long
looking at it and remembering why we’re here. Why some of us aren’t. Why we’re
in mourning and what we need to do to be redeemed. And that is when the process
of the Seder starts with questions. Why…? How…? Questions that we’re not even
meant to give answers to. Questions just so the children will ask. Just so that
they know we are listening to them. We hear them. We’re together with them. We’re
a family.
Pesach, our Exodus is a story of our redemption
and becoming a nation. The perquisite to that happening though is that first we
have to become a family. We have to undergo what they call in modern Hebrew “Tipul
Mishpachti”. We have to resolve our family issues. A nation is only as
strong as the families that it joins together. Every house is a Mikdash Me’eat-
a small temple. The doorpost is our Mizbayac- our altar - this
night where we sprinkle our blood-in case you didn’t get that. If the purpose that
we were meant to leave Egypt was to build Hashem a Temple and home here on this
world, we first have to get our own house where His shechina shines from
together. Seder night is when we do that.
Our Avoda on Pesach is to hear one
another. To talk to one another like never before. To listen to our shared
goals, our concerns, our fears, our traumas, our hopes and aspirations and
values. To hear each other’s questions and to talk about and validate and even
connect to each other’s dreams. It’s what we didn’t do when Yosef came to us. He
came to us with his sheep. With his goats. With his dreams. He was searching
for his brothers. It’s what his father sent him to do. It’s what our Father
wants us to do. And we failed.
We didn’t see king in those Ketonet Pasim,
and we didn’t see the “King” that is inside of him and inside of every yid; in
all of our brothers and sisters. The spark of the Melech Malchei Ha’Melachim
in each of us.
On this night we are all kings and we need to
see that in one another. We treat each other like kings. We pour water, wine
for our fellow kings at the table. We recline with them and we dip with them.
At the same time we are as well poor with them. We
are slaves with them. And we bleed and mourn with them. We’re smelted in that
iron furnace, the concentration camps, and the never-ending terror attacks and
persecutions of the Egypts of our Exile. This is what we need to undergo to
bring us together. It’s how we can fix our families and our homes so that
Hashem could skip on top of them and come down to this world. So that He Himself
can redeem us and shine out from our homes. From His home. There’s no work left
to be done in each house for Him to come into because He is already shining out
from within every family. We open the bloody doorpost that evening and get up
from our mourning to greet Eliyahu Ha’Navi.
His job, our sages tell us is not to purify the impure, to permit the
forbidden, to say one is good and one is bad. All four sons are together as a
family in this Seder. We fixed that. His job is only to return the children to
their Father. Return the Father to the children. To finally bring us home.
The redemption is around the corner this year.
The plagues and pandemics are all over. There’s only one thing left to fix. One
sacrifice and one tikkun we still have to make. The Satan is working overtime
trying to divide our family. The marches, the demonstrations, the rhetoric, the
hatred. We are not communicating. We are not listening to each other’s
questions. We think we know all the answers. We don’t see each other’s dreams. We
don’t see brothers and sisters. We see threats. We see wicked sons. We’re throwing
each other into pits. We’re not looking on the blood on the doorpost. We’re
missing the goat that is sitting in the middle of the room.
But the Satan will not win. One of the amazing
things about Pesach that is miraculously built into our Jewish DNA, is that we
all have a seder. We all come together as our family needs to. Each home. Each
family. We are all eating matza. We are all Kings. We are all desperately hungry
for that day to finally come when Eliyahu will join us. When Hashem will be
with us. We can do it. We will do it.
Yossi my jeep driver told me this week that the
one question that nobody asked in the times of the Bais Ha’Mikdash was “where
are you making the seder this year”. Everyone was in Yerushalayim. We were
all together. May that be the question that we don’t need to ask this year as
well.
Have a redemptively united Pesach,
Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz
**********************
GUESS WHO’S BACK IN MISHPACHA MAGAZINE JUST IN TIME FOR PESACH
It’s your favorite Rabbi Tour Guide!!
Check out my latest article on the
HILLS OF EPHRAIM
SHILO!!
https://mishpacha.com/dance-of-unity/
And then post share, and send letters to Mishpacha
telling them how much you enjoy them!
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YIDDISH PROVERB OF THE WEEK
“Ver
shemt zikh fun zeineh mishpocheh, oif dem iz kain brocheh.” - Whoever is ashamed of his family will have no blessings.
RABBI SCHWARTZ'S TOUR GUIDE EXAM QUESTION OF THE WEEK
answer below at end of Email
18) Which red
flower blooms after the anemone?
Where can you
find the plants: Moringa peregrina, Salvadora persica and Calotropis procera
(milkweeds)?
A) Bible Hill
B) Ein Gedi
C) The Lotz
cisterns
D) The Ramon
Crater (Makhtesh Ramon)
RABBI SCHWARTZ’S COOL VIDEO OF THE WEEK
https://soundcloud.com/ephraim-schwartz/melech-rachamon
- In honor of Pesach- one of my most beautiful compositions
that you really need to sing at every meal on Pesach after you get all vehi she’amda-d
out or have had enough of Rechnitze’s V’Hareinu… my Melech Rachaman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrCK7zLj2U0&t=61s
-Pesach is of course incomplete without Rabbi Schwartzes
Schwartz family Shiras HaYam- in Pajamas b’emtza halayla! Vayosha…
https://soundcloud.com/ephraim-schwartz/hachaya-yehalilu
– And of course my Ha’chaya Africa animal song
is always a good one to accompany your plagues…
feast!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8c-iuwpkD0
– This
song is one of the most beautiful ones that we’ve added to our Pesach Seder-
Chasal Siddur Pesach by Shira Chadasha… just beautiful…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prTs2rH8Ihg
– Mordechai Shapiro’s
Vehi She’amada … why not…
RABBI SCHWARTZ'S ERA’S AND THEIR
PLACES AND PEOPLE IN ISRAEL OF THE WEEK
Geichazi- 680
BC- With the miraculous
cure of the leprosy of Naaman after dipping in the Yarden as per Elisha’s
instruction, he becomes a Baal Teshuva. He renounces idolatry and he swears
that he will return to his land and never worship anyone but Hashem. He even asks
and is granted permission to take back the holy earth of Eretz Yisrael to
his land to always remember the miracle and daven on it. As any good goy
though, he doesn’t want anything for free. He wants to give Elisha a gift- a “blessing”
for his miracle. Elisha though refuses to take anything. He doesn’t want
anything to detract from Hashem’s miracle. It wasn’t him. It was Hashem. Just
like Avraham our forefather who refuses to take anything from the King
of Sodom after the miraculous battle he fouight on his behalf. This is all
about Hashem.
Elisha’s
greedy servant though, Geichazi is not of the same mindset. You don’t leave
a potential donor behind. So he goes running after Naaman and hits him
up for some silver and some clothing for the prophets. Even worse than that is that
he does this in Elisha’s name and even swears to that effect. Naaman,
of course dishes up the goods and Geichazi happily returns to Elisha.
Yet, he doesn’t remain that way for long.
Elisha
sees him when he comes in and gets what happened. He knows his student. He gives
Geichazi a chance to fess up, and yet when he doesn’t, he gives it to
him. He curses Geichazi and tells him that his ill-gotten goods are
going to be the source of his grief because the leprosy of Naaman will
now fall upon him. The money was given now as an atonement and now he is the
proud owner of that atonement in the form of leprosy. It is a terrible lesson.
It is an eternal one as well. Tzora’as befalls on one who swears falsely, on one
who is greedy, who is stingy and who doesn’t have respect for sages. Geichazi
is guilty of all of this and this will follow him for the rest of his life.
RABBI SCHWARTZ TERRIBLE
FAMILY JOKES OF THE WEEK
Chaim asks
his father, “What’s a man?”
His father
says, “A man is someone who is responsible and cares for their family.”
Chaim
replies, “I hope one day I can be a man just like mommy!”
Mom logic:
If you fall out of that tree and break your legs, don’t come running to me!
What three
words solves all of Dad’s problems? “Ask your mother.”
My dad
always taught me to share my toys with my siblings. It wasn’t that he wanted me
to develop social skills, it’s because he was a cheapskate that wanted to spend
50% less money on toys.
Boy: “Dad, can you explain a solar eclipse to
me?”
Dad: “No
sun.”
Berel
turned to his son and asked him “Sruli tatteleh, do you think I am a bad
father?”
His son
responded “ My name is Yitzy…”.
Daughter:
Mom, what’s it like to have the greatest daughter in the world?
Mom: I
don’t know. You’ll have to ask grandma.
Moishe told
his father “ For $20, I’ll be good.”
Totty said
–“ Oh, yeah? When I was your age, I was good for nothing.”
Who makes
the most money from Father’s Day? Therapists.
Parental
Truth - To Mom: “I don’t feel good” “Where’s my sock?” “Will you make me a
sandwich?” To Dad: “Where’s Mom?”
Why is a
computer so smart? It listens to its motherboard.
Sweater: Something you wear when your mom gets
cold.
Gunther
the cannibal was pretty late to his cannibal family reunion... ...they gave him
the cold shoulder...
It never
occurred to me how much my parents favored my twin brother until they asked me
to pick up the cake for his surprise birthday party.
What do
you say to your sister when she starts crying? “Are you having a crisis?”
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in
another city. -George Burns
Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops. -Cary Grant
I think a dysfunctional family is any family with more than one
person in it. -Mary Karr
Bleeding ulcers run in my family: We give them to each other. -Lois
McMaster Bujold
The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table
had an argument going. -George Carlin
When I was ten, my family moved to Downer’s Grove, Illinois. When I
was twelve, I found them. -Emo Phillips
Nothing in life is fun for the whole family. There are no massage
parlors with ice cream and free jewelry. -Jerry Seinfeld
Few mistakes can be made by a mother-in-law who is willing to
baby-sit. -Anonymous
Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children. -Sam
Levenson
Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive
pattern… like bad wallpaper. -Friedrich Nietzsche
After nearly 50 years, my grandmother has finally gotten my grandpa
to stop biting his nails. She hid his teeth.
What do you call an angry
French aunt? A crossaunt.
Shaindy a pregnant woman falls into a coma and doesn’t wake up
until after her babies are born. She immediately asks the doctor about them.
“Your twins are doing great! You had a boy and a girl. Your
brother named them for you.”
Like any sister would be, she was quite displeased. “Oh, no. My
brother is an idiot. What’d he name them?” “
Your daughter’s name is Denise,” the doctor began. Shaindy was pleased. That wasn’t
so bad.
“And the boy?”
“Denephew.”
The answer to this week”s question is B –Yeah… No clue about this one… and frankly not even interested. It’s erev Pesach so I really should’ve never even wasted time looking up this answer to this one. Botany is not my thing… Certainly not the names of flowers. I’m the “check out those pretty purple flowers” type of guide and that’s pretty much all you’ll get from me. I do happen to know that Kalanit is the anememones or whatever because theyre so beautiful and all over the place. But no clue as to what grows after them. The answer is nurit or butter cups ot raunculus according to Wiki if you care. As far as the Part II of the question I have no clue. I guessed Bible Hill but the truth is I would’ve definitely skipped this question. The answer is Ein Gedi though. And one of those things is the Sodom Apple. So I got this one wrong…. Back to cleaning for Pesach. So that makes the score as of now 14.5 for Schwartz and 3.5 for Ministry of tourism on this exam so far…
